Breaking the Walls: Unblock YouTube With These 5 Tips

When YouTube is blocked in your office, home, school, country or anywhere else, you might feel completely disconnected from the world. It’s especially annoying if you rely on quality video content exclusively hosted on the platform to learn or work. Fortunately, that does not have to be the end of it all.

It’s 2019. No one can take away your personal Spanish tutor, favorite music videos, or other entertainment on YouTube unless they unplug you from the internet completely. So, how can you get around a Youtube block? Read on to find out.

Understanding how YouTube can be blocked

You might try to access YouTube only to get an error message informing you that the website is unavailable to you. At other times, you could have access to YouTube itself but have issues viewing certain content on the platform.

No matter which one of these happens, the problem is the same: server-side blocking.

A higher authority (which could be your home, office or school network admin; an organization or country) has blocked access to the YouTube servers from their internal servers. In the latter case, the content uploader has specified that the video not be made available for our region – and your region is determined by the server from which you are accessing the YouTube servers.

Thus, to get out of this bind, you need to access the website from servers other than the blocked ones.

Let’s go see how that can be done.

1 Try Google Translate

One relatively unknown method of unblocking YouTube is by using Google Translate, which is yet another service from Google.

Head over to the official Google Translate website and enter the YouTube address in the search bar. Choose two different languages (source and target language), making sure at least one of these is English. Hit on the Translate button and you should see YouTube appear in the space below.

You can browse the video platform from within the Google Translate service until you are satisfied.

2 Try Some Browser Plugins

This will only work if you are allowed to install plugins on the computer’s browser – especially for people looking to unblock YouTube at home/ in school.

These browser plugins will allow you to browse the internet from other server locations than yours (which is the blocked server). Some of the browser extensions we recommend are:

●       Hola

●       UltraSurf and

●       ProxTube

Note: Browser extensions might help you access YouTube, but it doesn’t hide your internet activity from your home, office or school admin, the government or your ISP. In short, they can still see all you are doing on the network.

3 Get a VPN

A VPN is a piece of software designed with multiple servers placed in different countries and locations all around the world. When you connect to any location, you get to browse the internet like you are physically there.

You can, thus, be in the US while browsing the web like you were in Australia, and the websites you are contacting would know no better.

An obvious advantage of using a VPN to unblock YouTube is that your internet activity stays hidden from your ISP, your employer, and network admins. That way, you can consume as many videos you want without fear of being caught on the backend of that network.

4 Consider Using Mobile Hotspot

Sometimes, YouTube has been blocked on the specific network you are browsing the web with. If you have an alternative carrier plan associated with your phone, using a hotspot connection could solve the issue for you.

This gets better.

Since you are the one sharing that connection, as a node, you act kind of like the Internet Service Provider (ISP). In other words, you don’t have to fear someone looking in on your internet activity since you control the internet supply for streaming YouTube.

The downside to this plan is that you would incur additional data costs than if you had gone for any of the tips above.

5 Download the Videos

The beauty of YouTube is in being able to stream the videos without having to save them on your unit. If you really want to watch those videos, though, you might want to consider downloading videos off of YouTube instead.

But you can’t even access the website. How do you download from there?

Services like SaveFrom have made it possible to download YouTube videos without even entering the website. Just:

●       Search the video you want to see via Google

●       Copy the video link into the address bar of a new tab

●       Put ‘ss’ as a prefix to the YouTube video link

●       You will be led to a page where you can download the video in different formats and quality options.

Wrap Up

No matter how your YouTube access has been restricted, the above tips will help you get out of that bind in no time at all.

Do you have any other interesting way of unblocking your access to YouTube that we didn’t cover here? Please share with all of us in the comments.